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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32973 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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but I get the impression that a lot of Iran's badness is exaggerated by Western media

They're a totalitarian Islamic state that has hostility to the US itself ("The Great Satan") as one of their basic principles. They're a major sponsor of terrorism and have long been engaging in a (mostly) proxy war against a US ally. The groypers may support the latter but for most US citizens I suspect all of these are bad.

As for their legitimacy, that's a internal matter. My impression is that aside from the more Westernized Iranians most of whom escaped, were driven out, or were killed in or after the revolution, the Iranian people do support them, but I could be wrong. I have been assuming the protests are sponsored by the letters C, I, and A.

hostility to the US itself ("The Great Satan")

To be fair, from the perspective of a random ME country, it is not clear to me that that assessment is categorically wrong.

If a foreign country half a world away backed a coup to install some autocrat, then a few years later offered broad support to your regional enemy while said enemy attacked you with chemical weapons, hammered you with sanctions for decades, broke treaties, invaded your neighbor and made a complete mess of things, and generally provided cover for a client-state who would freely bomb your military installations and murder your nuclear weapon scientists, then bomb your military installations themselves, you would likely also not like that country a lot.

Hell, when Reagan called the USSR an 'Evil Empire', they had done far less to the US.

major sponsor of terrorism

The price for being the biggest sponsor of terror attacks on American soil clearly goes to Saudi Arabia for their links to Bin Laden.

have long been engaging in a (mostly) proxy war against a US ally.

That conflict is very much a two-way road. My considered opinion nowadays is that the Ayatollah and Nethanyahu richly deserve each other, and there is no reason for civilized countries to become entangled in their beef.

"US bad, actually" is a pretty common take, but

  1. When comparing the US to a Islamic theocracy, even with all the bad things the US has done, the US still comes out on top. BTW, the word "unprecedented' gets bandied out a lot nowadays, but one of the revolution's early acts was the Iran hostage crisis at the US embassy to Iran. That was "unprecedented".

and

  1. From the perspective an American, it doesn't matter. They're an enemy whether the US deserves the enmity or not.

As for the "Evil Empire", regardless of what they did or didn't do to the US, the USSR was that; ask the Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Hungarians, and the survivors of the Prague Spring, among many others.

As for the "Evil Empire", regardless of what they did or didn't do to the US, the USSR was that; ask the Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Hungarians, and the survivors of the Prague Spring, among many others.

Oh, I am not doubting that. I am not some Holodomor denier.

I am also not saying that the net effect of the US is as atrocious as the net effect of the Ayatollah regime. FWIW, I consider the net effect of the US to be strongly positive from a global point of view. However, I would claim that if we only consider the territory of Iran, then the effect of the US seems pretty clearly net negative. The Ayatollah has certainly be worse from my PoV, but Iranians have little reason to like the US.

While I am sure that the Iranian hostage crisis was in some ways "unprecedented", I don't think it will even make the top 50 atrocities committed in the ME. Presumably the perception of the revolutionaries was that the Shah was basically a stooge, and the US the puppet masters. The people in the US embassy were working very hard to keep the Shah in power and Iran under the thumb of the US. Sure, the Shah had guaranteed them diplomatic immunity, and violating their embassy would be a defection from diplomatic norms, but it does not read to me as an act of pure evil. (With the benefit of hindsight, it was also very stupid on part of the revolutionaries. They gained nothing, antagonized a global superpower and also set themselves up for becoming a diplomatic pariah.)

Iranians may not be pro-USA, but the youth disillusionment with the regime is very real. Look at pictures of the IRGC; they're all old.

Eh, the youth in the USA are disillusioned too.

The large protests awhile ago in response to that woman being beaten to death in police captivity for not wearing her hijab suggests the regime is not as ideologically aligned with the public as they had hoped.

Additionally, the current unrest is based on material issues. Iran has a bad drought, bleak prospects for water security, is facing rising inflation on basic goods, their currency is devaluing and shop keepers are closing in protest.

I don't think you need to be on America's side to be a dissatisfied Iranian.

the regime is not as ideologically aligned with the public as they had hoped.

The never really were, Iran is what would have happened if the Bolsheviks had gotten stuck in the Soviet Twenties for fifty years.

I imagine the protests over the hijab girl being killed made everyone's private doubts public though.

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